"Virtually all the catalogs you receive in your mailbox are printed on virgin paper, " Smith says.

CNN: Catalog company going lean and green

But since then plummeting prices for virgin paper, plastic and fuels, and hence also for the waste that substitutes for them, have put an end to such visions.

ECONOMIST: Talking rubbish

Among contenders for the top spot offshore is OIL, which has benefited from an Asian fondness for companies from the British Virgin Islands (on paper the second-largest investor in China in 2010, after Hong Kong).

ECONOMIST: Company formation

When you put your paper in the trash, you boost the demand for virgin pulp and thus help trees win out over driveways in the competition for acreage.

FORBES: Environmentalist, Spare That Tree

Investec's involvement is seen as significant because Virgin Mobile is preparing a big marketing push in South Africa, the paper said.

BBC: Branson may take Virgin Mobile public

It greeted the Virgin group with a walk through its industrial-style offices, strewn with 600 red paper airplanes.

FORBES: Marketing

In the main Beijing office, a homely red-painted house in a courtyard littered with bicycles, visitors would be handed staff cards printed on recycled paper and given metal reusable chopsticks, together with a lecture on how much of China's virgin forest was disappearing for wooden chopsticks every year.

ECONOMIST: Liang Congjie